I'm writing a short (3-5 page) business plan in Japanese.
I'd like to include an "estimate" of the sales for the next 3 years.

The question: what would you choose for the graph titled:

2012 Fiscal Year Sales Projections

2012年度の売上高の________

?

I've seen words like 目標 and ノルマ used to refer to a sales target/sales "budget" -- e.g. how much sales a company expects a person, team, or division to achieve.

I use 予算 more frequently to discuss a client's budget (i.e. for spending, not for earning) for a project, as in the construct:

ご予算はどのぐらいをお考えですか。

About how much are you thinking to budget for this project?

But I've also heard 予算 used to discuss the "budget" that a company must achieve in terms of sales.

That said, something like 推計 translates nicely in English as "estimate" or "estimation", and given that I'm trying to plan a business sales plan for 2.5 years from now, I'd say "estimate" in English is a pretty good sense of what I'm doing -- it's just a few stages short of a "SWAG" :).

This is not the point of the question, but ご予算はどのぐらいお考えですか should be ご予算はどのぐらいをお考えですか if you are asking a client how much the budget is. If someone says the former to me, I would guess that it is a mistake for the latter, but if I ignore this possibility, the former could be an (arguably unnatural) way to ask “How hard are you thinking about the budget?”
– Tsuyoshi ItoAug 5 '11 at 15:10

From what I understand about "SWAG" guesses, 予想 seems to be the one that fills your bill.

Regarding 推計: Personally I've seen 推計 mostly in the context of making guesses about past or current figures, as in "人口推計" (current population estimates).

Regarding 予算: I'm not familiar with the usage of 予算 on the earning side of the equation, but a quick web search gives me the impression that it's best suited for accounting, sales and/or project management people, who get the work rolling in earnest [1].